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On June 17, 2013, a senior citizens’ organization occupied the main office of the Instituto Nicaraguense de Seguridad Social (INSS), the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute. The group is known as UNAM, the National Senior Citizen’s Union. For at least the past five years, UNAM has been trying to get the Nicaraguan government to grant reduced pensions. By law, Nicaraguans must complete 750 weeks of contributions into the social security system to be eligible for full retirement benefits. UNAM’s membership, by and large, fell short of the goal. Unfortunately, the regulations that would have enforced UNAM’s claim were done away with in the 1990s, as neo-liberal governments were voted into office. However, the Sandinista government led by Daniel Ortega, promised to reinstate reduced pensions. They have yet to do so. Now, with Ortega is well into his second term, UNAM’s protest took off. They occupied the INSS.

It is not my intention to review the events of last week, but I have compiled articles published in The Nicaragua Dispatch, which was just about the only news organization covering the occupation of the INSS in English (see bottom of this post). Instead, I would like to address the use of social media as UNAM’s protest unfolded. Two rival groups engaged through social media. The hashtag #OcupaINSS was used by those who supported UNAM in its claim against the government. The hashtag #AmiNoMeEngañaLaDerecha (#RightWingersDon’tFoolMe, henceforth ANED) was used by those who supported the government’s position. Using Topsy Pro Analytics, I tracked the progress of each hashtag during the period between June 17 and June 27. Here are the results:

During the first days of the period in question, #OcupaINSS had the upper hand. On June 21, #ANED starts trending. It would overtake #OcupaINSS in a matter of hours. #ANED kept the lead for the remainder of the period.#OcupaINSS declined significantly after the government-sponsored rally that took place on June 24.

The most shared tweets for #OcupaINSS and #ANED on their respective peak days are pictured below. The most circulated tweet for #OcupaInss has been shared 295 times as or this writing. It is a message of support for #OcupaINSS. The top #ANED tweet has reached 70 shares. It is a photograph of a group of senior citizens waiting to receive the so-called Solidarity Bonus, temporary, at-will government aid funded with money from ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas). The data from Topsy reflects retweets and replies for the entire sample period.

Topsy Pro Analytics also provides data for potential impressions. The #OcupaINSS tweet potentially garners 592 thousand impressions. The #ANED tweet reached 12 thousand potential impressions. This can be explained by the number of followers each originating account has. @LuisEnrique is a Nicaraguan musician with a well-established international career. He has almost 500 thousand followers on Twitter. @jscomunicadores, on the other hand, is the official Twitter account for the communication’s arm of the Juventud Sandinista 19 de Julio, a Nicaraguan political organization affiliated with the Sandinista party. @jscomunicadores has a little over 24 hundred followers. It is safe to assume that most of them are in Nicaragua.

Other observations:

The decline of #OcupaINSS and the accompanying surge of #ANED might be explained by the events themselves, and by organizational factors. The decline of #OcupaINSS activity, for one, could be linked to the rally on June 24. The president of UNAM, Porfirio García, spoke at this event. He stated his organization’s willingness to come to an settlement. As of this writing, the Sandinista government has agreed to meet with UNAM regularly, to provide limited benefits, such as eye exams, to continue the Solidarity Bonus. We can assume that reduced pensions would be discussed, but there is no certainty that they will be granted. From the @OcupaINSS twitter and Facebook accounts, sympathizers greeted the agreement. They issued a statement supporting UNAM’s decision to negotiate, albeit warned that the movement would remain vigilant.

In terms of organization, #OcupaINSS is not an organization in the traditional sense of the word. It is an ad hoc movement that came out in support of UNAM. #OcupaINSS did not trigger the protests in Managua, so it should not be regarded as the Nicaraguan equivalent of the so-called Arab Spring. Rather, #OcupaINSS should be considered as a short-term manifestation of public opposition to the government. The negotiation between UNAM and the government took all the impetus out of the protest. On the other hand, the Sandinista government has a well organized communication machine. This is a long-standing phenomenon. Thus, communication messages can be relayed quickly and efficiently, once a hashtag has been agreed upon. Furthermore, once the hashtag #ANED began trending, continued usage is not linked to any particular event. Even though it is a mouthful, and even though the hashtag uses up 15% of the 140 character limit, #ANED users can keep linking it to any instance where right wing media conspiracies can be implied.

The data at hand is copious, so I can only offer preliminary observations as to the types of messages that each group relayed using their hash tags. I’ll use the data from June 22 as an example, as on this date #ANED’s advantage was 695 tweets over #OcupaINSS. That is as close as these two groups ever came to each other. #OcupaINSS’ top 10 tweets included statements of support by public figures, such as Luis Enrique (musician), Sergio Ramirez Mercado (novelist and former VP of Nicaragua), and Carlos Luis Mejia (musician). The hashtag also accompanied tweets by @LaPrensa, an opposition newspaper, and @Canal2Nicaragua, a television station. The rest of the tweets were issued by @OcupaINSS, a twitter account that was created ad hoc to provide information for supporters of the protest, and private individuals.

On the other hand, #ANED’s top 10 tweets primarily came from the account of Adriana Blandon (@AdrianaBlandon1). This user identifies herself as a college student. She has over 8 thousand followers. There were no identifiable public figures, or news media on the list. However, one of the tweets came from @jupresidente, the Twitter account of the Juventud Sandinista 19 de Julio. Most of the messages indexed with #ANED were statements of support, including the repeated use of the hashtag itself. Since A mi no me engaña la derecha is a declarative statement on its own right, the hashtag could be appended with any further explanation. There was only one informational message, inviting people to attend the rally on June 24.

Some final words:

As I said previously, this analysis is preliminary. I have yet to sort through the data and code it. However, I feel comfortable making some observations. First of all, it is clear that #AmiNoMeEngañaLaDerecha trended stronger than #OcupaINSS. Organizational factors should account for that, as the Ortega government’s communication strategies are not ad hoc. #OcupaINSS is ad hoc, and now that the INSS is no longer occupied, the hash tag has lost steam quickly.

Secondly, #AmiNoMeEngañaLaDerecha is not merely a hash tag. It is a statement, and as such, it can be used on its own, by anyone. The hash tag is not necessarily attached to a particular event, which gives it an advantage.

In third place, the role of mainstream Nicaraguan media is worth noting. Media organizations like @laprensa and @Canal2Nicaragua used #OcupaINSS to index news reports. This might be an issue of convenience, and it is not uncommon. Media organization reporting on events of public importance use the same hash tags as those who are partaking in said events. Here’s an example, from Wired magazine:

In this case, though, @laprensa’s use of the #OcupaINSS tag has another practical effect. It plays into the the narrative of right wing media manipulation because @laprensa is an opposition news paper. @laprensa is very open in its stance against Ortega. The paper commonly identify him as el presidente inconstitucional Daniel Ortega, unconstitutional president Daniel Ortega (see examples here, here, and here). It should be noted that those who oppose the government can also claim that #AmiNoMeEngañaLaDerecha exemplifies left wing manipulation. Without coding the data, I offer no conclusion to support either position.

Finally, if you expect a Nicaraguan Spring of sorts because of social media usage, the events I reviewed here and their aftermath do not support this. Furthermore, social media is merely a tool. It is not a magic wand that creates revolutions and upheavals out of thin air. In Nicaragua, this tool also has limited potential. Only about 11% of the Nicaraguan population has internet access, and those who do have internet usually reside in urban centers. This means that movements that rely primarily on social media exclude more people than they include. However, the most important factor that hinders the opposition’s social media strategies is that they’re usually ad hoc and short lived. They are subject to changes in the political landscape, as everything else is. That is exactly what happened with #OcupaINSS, though some might argue that the movement isn’t dead. I would suggest that movements can only survive if it has long term goals. #OcupaINSS did not. It’s rival hashtag does.

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I began experimenting with blogs in 2005, as a way to promote collaborative writing in the classroom. I have to say that my first experience was a case of unbridled enthusiasm for technology, but I was utterly unprepared for what would happen. I had bought into the notion of the digital native, that mythical creature that is practically born with a silver keyboard in his or her hand, and that can seamlessly float from one technology to the next. Needless to say that this experience taught me a lot about how people think about and use technology. It’s not as simple as people like Marc Prensky make it sound.

My first attempt was in a remedial writing class. I was an adjunct, teaching at Ave Maria College of the Americas (now Ave Maria University – Latin American Campus) in San Marcos, Nicaragua. I wanted a way for students to post quick responses to simple questions, so that they could practice their grammar and spelling. What I did not expect was that my students would get bogged down by the technology, which became a distraction that took attention away from the true goal of the assignment. I never tried it again with that course, even though I taught it every semester I was at AMCA.

My next foray went slightly better. In fact, I started this blog because of it. I modeled my blogging assignment after Danielle Stern’s portfolio assignment, a version of which can be found here. I also decided that if I was going to use a blog to mentor students as they made sense of course content, I should be writing as well. I started producing mini-essays, which used multi-media examples to illustrate course content. All of them are filed in the “class notes” category of this blog.

There are problems with this approach, though. You have to be very selective with the videos you include, because even though blogs make it possible for us to write with multimedia, we have no control over YouTube. Copyrighted content might be perfect to illustrate a point, but it is also likely to disappear. So now, I’m actually thinking about going back and cleaning house. The other issue to think about is the public nature of blogs. I may choose to make my writing public, but my students’ privacy needs to be protected. At a minimum, they should have a choice in the matter. That said, it is easier to protect student privacy when everyone is contributing a “centralized class blog,” rather than using the “hub-and-spoke” model (see Mark Semple’s post). I can create the blog as a private space when it’s centralized, but I can’t guarantee that in the “hub-and-spoke.”

That leads me to my current thinking about blogs. Part of it was inspired by Mark Semple’s entry on Professor Hacker. The other part came from reading about research diaries. First, I really liked the idea of creating different roles for students, which is something that Semple discusses. I find that it is a good way of giving them experience in different types of writing. I adopted Semple’s roles (first reader, respondent, searcher), divided the class into teams, and created a posting schedule for them. I also created a rubric for the assignment, all of which can be accessed here.

I also became interested in using a research diary . The benefits diaries have been extensively documented, especially in terms of their value for the professional development of teachers (e.g., Jarvis, 1992). However, diaries can fulfill similar functions for researchers. They are a tool for reflection (Borg, 2001; Janesick, 1998). Borg specifically discusses several advantages of research diaries. They establish a record of project development, document past ideas and their subsequent evolution, help organize procedures, and document decision-making (p. 171). As I envisioned it, the diaries would also support collaboration among students. They were expected to read and comment on their peers entries, and were encouraged to share sources, insights, and tips.

In terms of classroom management, the diaries helped me keep track of what students were doing, which allowed me to step in at the appropriate times, rather than waiting for their project’s conclusion. The assignment description is available here. Since the assignment is still ongoing, I can only offer some preliminary thoughts as to its assessment:

1. Making the diaries into a relatively low-stakes assignment made a difference. Students contributed very detailed entries.

2. Modeling portions of the research process and sharing my own experiences as a researcher may have also been beneficial. It set the tone for the blog, and it may have reduced the level of stress that comes with assignments in general.

3. Students used the comments feature of the blog to brainstorm, provide feedback, and share resources. Peer reviewing has been ongoing, judging from what they have documented on the blog, and also by what they have expressed to me during office hours.

I am still trying to find ways to improve these blogging assignments, and I am thinking of adding some kind of an exit interview if I decide to repeat this project. As it stands, their final reflection is a built-in tangible assessment of the experience, but I feel short interviews would be very beneficial for me, as the person who designed this assignment.

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I have been watching the olympics faithfully, but not on NBC. It’s one of the unexpected benefits of visiting my homeland, Nicaragua. Unlike NBC, our local licensee, Canal 10, is showing the London games live, and though their commercial breaks are often clumsy, at least they’re not the subject of a widespread backlash, nor has anyone from Canal 10 taken to Twitter to complain about whinny viewers. Nope, that was Vivian Schiller, NBC’s Chief Digital Officer.

However, the issue is not just about tape delays. American audiences are using Twitter to complain about NBC’s handling of the olympics as a whole. For instance, their decision to replace Akram Khan’s tribute to the victims of the London bombings of 2005 with an interview with Michael Phelps drew plenty of criticism.

NBC felt the edit was justified, though. It’s something routine, they said. Moreover, they did not stream the opening ceremony because they insist that it was just too complex for the internet. The opener needs context, which their anchors, Meredith Viera, Matt Lauer and Bob Costas would provide . The thing is that the context included memorable gaffes, such as Meredith Viera’s offhand comment about Tim Berners-Lee, and Matt Lauer’s quip about Madagascar. If this was an attempt at humor, Viera and Lauer failed, at least according to those annoyed viewers who took to Twitter.

'Tim Berners-Lee - if you haven't heard of him, we haven't either' NBC. And they say Americans are insular....
tinyurl.com/cbsa4wg

As if this wasn’t enough, NBC has repeatedly spoiled its own primetime broadcast. The network holds back the main events, such as the Ryan Lochte – Michael Phelps show down in the 400 IM, only to reveal the outcome prior to the telecast. Missy Franklin’s gold medal performance in the pool was likewise spoiled, when the network decided to air a promo of her interview in the Today Show just minutes before showing the actual swim.

Words cannot describe #NBCfail by airing Today Show promo of Franklin win before the race while still pretending its live. Unreal. #Olympics

Spoling is nothing new. It’s a common activity that has emerged within what Henry Jenkins and others have come to call participatory culture. Spoiling is like a game, a challenge that extends the pleasure that people get out of watching television (see Jenkins, 2006). However, when NBC spoils itself, there is no challenge and no skill required. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of how participatory cultures operate online. These are cultures that take shape because of the technologies that allow people to create, share, and debate easily, and to feel that “their contributions matter” (Jenkins, Purushotma, Clinton, Weigel & Robinson, 2009, p 7).

NBC’s heavy handling of criticism on Twitter shows the opposite. The network clearly underestimated the backlash its complaint against Guy Adams would garner. Alerted by Twitter, NBC filed a complaint against Adams, a freelancer for The Independent, and got him suspended from Twitter for publishing Gary Zenkel’s email address. Zenkel is the president of NBC Olympics, and Adams encouraged irate tweetizens to email their complaints to this NBC executive. This is a violation of the Terms of Service, according to Twitter, though it is debatable that a corporate email should be considered private information. If it is, discontented twitter users didn’t buy it, and neither did The Independent and other critics. In fact, the entire incident was characterized as censorship of the worse variety, and also as hypocritical. After all, Spike Lee was not banned for tweeting what he thought was George Zimmerman’s home address. Twitter took plenty of flack for its role, and it reinstated and apologized to Adams. NBC rescinded its complaint, and now the network admits that they “didn’t initially understand the repercussions” of their action against Adams. That’s a pretty big admission. It makes me wonder if NBC understands how Twitter operates as a culture.

Granted, the peacock network is achieving its ratings objectives, but it has done so at the expense of the goodwill of some of the most media savvy fans of the olympics. These individuals are part of a new type of culture that has been enabled through our ability to connect, access, and share information. Yes, American audiences are watching NBC, unless there are other choices. Some of the more media savvy viewers are already bypassing NBC altogether. It’s not that hard. Just go to Reddit or Lifehacker, or read Jeff Jarvis’ column and you can learn all about it.

It’s obvious that today’s audiences are more savvy and can become vocal quite easily because the tools to express discontent are readily available. It’s the same tools we use to find out the results of olympic competitions before NBC’s primetime telecast. However, NBC goes on, and I can’t help but wonder if the peacock network is intent on matching the infamous Heidi Game of 1968.

To NBC’s credit, they did apologize for the Heidi Game. As of this writing, they haven’t acknowledged the barrage of negative comments posted on their Facebook page, and the only gesture to the audience, as far as I can tell, is that Jim Bell, executive producer of the olympic telecast, has responded to complaints through Twitter. For instance, here’s what he said about spoiling the results.

It’s a start, but is it enough? Bell also shared this entry from Business Insider on Twitter. I don’t think that something titled “Shut your pie-holes, people: NBC’s Olympics Coverage is Perfect” is going to win too many points for NBC. Surprisingly, the thousands of Twitter users availing themselves to the #NBCFail hash tag haven’t latched on to that one.

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Getting an invitation to Google +, if you’re interested in social media at all, feels like finding a golden ticket to the Wonka factory. It’s rare, and when you finally get it, you access an exclusive space that probably few among your Facebook friends are privy too. In my case, I have 100+ FB friends, yet only about 7 are on Google+. The reason is pretty simple: Google is throttling access to their social media platform. Yesterday, July 6th, they opened up a brief window of opportunity. Their aim was to double their user base. They must have achieved their goal very quickly, as the window shut down within hours.

I managed to get on the platform. An invite that had been sent to me on July 5th finally made it through, and now I’m part of the beta test group. I was able to send out a couple of invites, but as far as I can tell, only two people were able to join. I also tried a workaround posted on cnet. Still waiting to hear on that one as well, and I have serious doubts that it still works. In the mean time, this is my take on Google +.

Beta testing hype: When restriction translates into interest.

Google beta tests are not always restricted. In fact, anyone can go to Google Labs and test out their prototypes. We hardly ever hear about low profile projects, like Google Transliteration, Follow Finder, or Google Body, and for good reason. Many ideas probably don’t make it past the initial testing phase. In the meantime, though, we are helping Google with our free labor as beta testers. In return, we get to play around with prototypes.

Restricting the beta test certainly keeps Google from exceeding its capacity to sustain a social network. Yet it also achieves something else. The restriction just makes Google + more desirable. The early adopters do a great deal of word of mouth marketing for Google. We write about our experience on the site, and we offer our invites to Facebook friends. The truth is that we want them on Google +, because the whole point of a social networking platform is to be social. If none of our friends are on Google+, who are we supposed to interact with?

Right now, we all seem to be hanging out with other geeks, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone. Everett Rogers, author of Diffusion of Innovations, described the process whereby innovations, new ideas, and new technologies spread. According to Rogers, one can categorize individuals according to their innovativeness, that is, their willingness to try an innovation. The first category, which Rogers calls “innovators” is made up by individuals who are willing and able to take greater risks. What makes them innovators, though, is not merely the fact that they can take risks. It is the fact that they have access to the innovation before anyone else, often because they have social contacts with the creators of the innovation. In this case, we should consider technology bloggers, like Pete Cashmore or Leo Laporte, to fit this category.

The next category is the early adopter. Like the innovators, they are willing and able to test out the innovations, but unlike the first group, early adopters lack the direct access to the epicenters of innovation. They are just chomping at the bit to get in, however, and when they do, early adopters are key. They do a lot of the leg work that leads to higher adoption rates of the innovation. In the case of Google+, early adopters like myself are not only testing out features on the site. We are also actively trying to get our friends into Google+. Don’t be surprised when some of your FB friends start posting messages on their wall, offering to send invites to whomever wants them. That’s how Google+ will spread for the time being.

One of the interesting things about the launch of Google+ has been the sporadic availability of the invites. Indeed, Google+ opens up the site, enables users to invite friends, and then clamps down again. No one knows when this bursts Google generosity will happen, or how long the portal will remain open. It can be a few hours or barely minutes, which is why the Los Angeles Times suggests that if you want be an early adopter for Google+, your best bet is to check the Google+ site periodically. Perhaps then you’ll get lucky.

By now, there are dozens of reviews about Google + features. Circles and hangouts are the most popular. Circles is essentially a different way of organizing the people you follow. By default, Google+ gives you four categories, friends, family, acquaintances, and following. The labels are self explanatory, but in case you miss it, Google+ provides you with a definition of what they mean by these terms. Friends, for example, are “your real friends, the ones you feel comfortable sharing private details with,” whereas Following is people you don’t know at all.

You can argue that Facebook and Twitter also allow you to create different categories and lists of friends, followers, and people you follow. However, I’ve found working with Twitter lists is very awkward. Groups, though arguably better, is not drag and drop, and this is where circles is far easier to use. Circles is drag and drop, and you can create as many circles as you wish.

Sharing is also designed with reminders about privacy in mind. In fact, you can’t post anything to Google+ without specifying how it will be shared. Public makes it available on your public profile, and copies everyone who has added you to their circles. Yet you can also choose to share only with your friends, coworkers, family, bowling team, or whatever combination of groups and people you wish. Again, Facebook has something similar, but it is not built into the sharing mechanics, and you don’t have to specify how your posts will be shared.

Perhaps my favorite feature is the ability to edit my posts after the fact. I can add, delete, and correct anything, no matter how long ago it was posted. There is a glitch, though: the edit function does not work with photo albums. That is something that I hope Google+ will fix.

As for hangouts, I haven’t been able to test them out yet. The people at Mashable describe hangouts as “Google+ killer feature” . Even without testing it out, the ability to video chat with 10 people at one time is much better than what Facebook has to offer.

There was also one thing that puzzled me at first, the incomingfeed. I didn’t get the point of having it. Essentially, the incoming feed holds posts that are shared with you by people who are not in your circles. Right now, it is of no use to me, as everyone seems to be sharing within their circles. Eventually, I’m guessing that it will be come the spam feed, and I like the idea of not having to deal with the spammers that plague my Twitter profile.

With the deluge of information about Google+, I think it’s more useful to wrap up this post by sharing some resources about the new social platform. Here they are:

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You can’t have PCA without a fan studies panel. Better yet, if you are in anyway interested in fan studies, this is the spot of the week. My first stop was a session titled “Counting and recounting the players in fan culture.”. The three panelists, all from Old Dominion U, discussed fandoms from the perspectives of marketing, transmedia storytelling, and ACA-Fandom.” Of these presentations, I was particularly interested in marketing, and ACA-Fandom.

In terms of marketing, Diane Cooke, from ODU discussed the role of fan communities as marketing tools. This is a fascinating subject for me, as I am most interested in about the intersection between fandoms and corporate cultures. In the textual poachers model, fandom is about establishing a moral economy, which necessarily pits fans and corporate interest. However, I find myself often thinking that it can’t be that simple. Nothing ever is, and this is why I chose to study fans who interact in spaces that are furnished by corporations. Diane Cooke’s presentation addressed a related topic. Based on the work of Peter Morville, she suggested the “Markets are conversations.” Furthermore, the corporate players involved in these conversations are actually tying to be responsive.

Now, that kind of statement would not fly under the transgressive, textual poacher model. “What do you mean corporate players are trying to be responsive? Don’t you realize that whenever they get involved in anything, they wreck it?”

That may be so, but I’m a pragmatist. Fan communities are no longer marginal to the way in which the culture industries operate (BTW… that’s also a Jenkism). Rather, fans are really seen as valuable brand advocates, which is why D. Cooke’s presentation was so engaging for me. Her project was about mapping fan conversations about the release of the Beatles Rock Band game, and it uses a rhizomatic perspective.

Now, if you’re not familiar with rhizomes, or you know them in another context, perhaps, they are a metaphor for complexity. Deleuze and Guattari came up with it, and they used it to explain how we can construct knowledge, and understand complex phenomena. Rhizomes are essentially surface roots, which spread in different directions. The analyst and the critic of culture would be well advised to follow the rhizomes, wherever they may lead. In this sense, rhizomatic theory is different than other philosophical perspectives about knowledge. Rhizomatics is about connections and disruptions, whereas the more traditional way of understanding knowledge is about specialization and deep respect for authority.

What makes rhizomes so well suited for projects that map web-based interaction is precisely this idea of surface, and even unpredictability. In nature, you can’t really predict where a rhizome will go (yes, rhizomes are real. They are actual roots… next time you go to the grocery store and pick up ginger root, you should know that’s a rhizome). In an online environment, you can’t predict what will become a meme, be forgotten, lay dormant and then re-emerge, be taken at face value, or what impact any of it may have. If anything, you can follow a phenomena, and you can map it and describe it, but you can’t expect to fully comprehend it.

“The rhizome is huge, so how can you maintain conversations?” That was one take away from Cooke’s presentation. As she described the process of mapping, you have to be aware of the various stakeholders that are involved in this conversations. You have the official ones, which are essentially the corporations that have incorporated the internet into their marketing efforts (that would be ALL OF THEM), and the consumers, which include fans. Fans will take to the internet, and share information, and official stakeholders are always keeping an eye out.

I don’t mean that in the sense of spying. I mean it in the sense of recognizing the opportunities that fans create for brand extension. In this sense, Cooke described fans in ways reminiscent of Muniz and O’Guinn’s brand communities. They keep up with the developments that pertain the objects of their fandom, and they share information and speculation about these objects.

Cooke’s colleague at Old Dominion University, Danielle Roach, spoke on “Pre-Jenkins ACA-Fandom.” Her work brought in a feminist perspective on ACA-Fandom, by suggesting that feminist scholars who wrote about fandom before Jenkins published textual poachers had been left out of the historiography of fan studies. I wholeheartedly agree with the argument, but I can’t help but wonder if the omission of individuals like Janice Radway is not only due to the declining fortunes of feminism (Roach’s argument), but could also be the result of the ways in which we label and self-identify our work. I mean, did Janice Radway ever say she studied fans?

Still, why aren’t we including much earlier work on fandom as part of the historiography of the discipline? Perhaps is because starting points, or foundational stories if you want, are often arbitrary. However, the ways in which power structures play out and influence academic disciplines should be taken into account. I found that to be Roach’s most valuable contribution, and that was my main take away from her discussion of the historiography of fandom.

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Today, I tried something new with googledocs. It’s probably not really new, but it was new to me, and I felt like I had discovered it.

Well, I had not, but it was exciting, and it all started with this video.

This spreadsheet was posted in February of 2011. It shows us real-time crowd sourcing. The collaborators are thousands of volunteers. Their task: to translate hundreds of voice messages coming out of Egypt during the uprisings that pushed out Hosni Mubarak from Arabic into English. These messages were then re-posted as tweets. You can read more about this project, and the Speak2Tweet technology that made it possible here.

What does any of this have to do with my intro to media class?

No, we did not contribute to the spreadsheet. What actually happened is that we used Googledocs to collaborate in the classroom. The topic was advertising, and my students went on a youtube scavenger hunt.

I have been teaching a session on advertising techniques for a few years now, and I use a hand-out developed by the Media Awareness Network, which describes 15 such techniques. I like it because it is clear, and it gets the job done, at least as far as an introductory course is concerned. Until now, my modus operandi had been to look for suitable examples on my own, but I realize that this sidelines my students. I wanted to put them at the forefront. So, I gave them the handout, asked them to get in groups, and instructed them to find examples. I created a googledoc, and shared it to the entire class. They copied and pasted the urls, and now we have a document that they created, as opposed to something I came up with. Here is the result. Unfortunately, I was unable to create a screencast as the students were compiling their lists (it was sooooooo cool, just to see the document coming together in real time). I will try again later on.

We did have a lively discussion, which went beyond the advertising strategies listed on the handout. This Volkswagen commercial, for example, prompted an exchange about portrayals of “ideal families” on commercial advertising. We detected quite a bit of nostalgia, as this ad reflects an upper middle class household, where only one parent works outside the home.

This ad, on the other hand, initiated another discussion about limits. How far can you go in an ad before you cross a line?

As an instructor, I am beginning to play around with interactivity. Googledocs certainly allowed us to share insights about content that I would probably have missed, had I been solely relying on my own resources. In fact, I probably would have never come across many of the commercials that my students shared with the class. This is because recall definitely played a role in how my class looked for examples. Indeed, several students selected commercials they remember watching as children, which also provided a good opportunity to talk about what makes commercials stand out.

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About Cynara M. Medina

Media scholar, Nicaraguan, educator. I write about mass and social media, new technologies, and their impact on our social, political, and educational environments. Views expressed on this blog are my own.